Saturday, September 04, 2010

For You are my rock and my fortress;Therefore, for Your name’s sake,Lead me and guide me.— Psalm 31:3 (NKJV)

Even the most enthusiastic, best informed, and mostwell-intentioned leaders may struggle in selecting the bestprojects for creating and implementing 2,000 percentsolutions. They are most likely to latch onto one of the firstimprovements that are proposed or occur to them. Inmany cases, leaders will not be able to come up with agood quantitative measurement of what they want toimprove. Organizations are neither going to benefitequally from all 2,000 percent solutions they could createnor are organizations equally well prepared to work on awide variety of such solutions. Leaders will be greatlyhelped by the faithful breakthrough servant who doesadvance homework to identify the most valuable, easiestto accomplish projects and the appropriate goals for thoseprojects. As wonderful as having such information is,there’s a lot of work involved. Let’s look at some helpfulsuggestions to supplement what is described in Part Twoof The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook.

Start by imagining every potential improvement you canthat could be supportive of the organization’s hiddenconsensus among its stakeholders. In spelling out thosepotential improvements, the breakthrough servantshould be sure to look at the benefits in terms of allstakeholders as well as their short- and long-termimplications.

During this first step, it’s perfectly appropriate to makesome wild guesses about what the improvements mightbe and their magnitudes. Test your ideas with people whoare knowledgeable about potential benefits from improvedperformance and can consider them in terms of thelikelihood of such benefits being gained and how large thebenefits might be. If you receive greatly differing opinions,ask the people who disagree to explain to one another howthey arrived at their conclusions. In such a case, it will oftenbe possible to develop an improved answer that combinesthe best insights of all the knowledgeable people who havegiven an opinion.

From what you learn, boil down the list of potentialimprovements to the ten or so that seem to offer the bestcombination of the benefits being likely to occur and to beenjoyed in substantial quantities. Next, consider what thekey accomplishments are to make the breakthroughs onthe list possible. Although some other accomplishmentsbeyond those on your list can prove to be more importantfor advancing the hidden consensus, in the beginning ofidentifying the best breakthrough solutions to pursue, it’shelpful just to see where knowledgeable people anticipatethat accomplishments will lead to important benefits beingcreated and how large those will be. After you have a list ofkey accomplishments that are required to gain the desiredbenefits, compare that list to what your organization hasbeen most effective in accomplishing. See where there areclose matches and large mismatches. For the mismatches,do some research to see if other organizations orindividuals are in a good position to provide the missingskill, knowledge, or experience needed to achieve thoseaccomplishments. Check on the potential availability of thehelping organizations and individuals and, for the availableones, investigate the costliness and difficulty of workingwith them. Now focus on the key accomplishments thatwould be easiest to do, either based on your organization’sresources or by relying on outside help that you can affordand expect to succeed in working with. Take thoseaccomplishments and consider what other benefits couldbe produced from them that expand well beyond youroriginal concept of improvements that would advanceperformance in serving the hidden consensus.

Next, winnow your list of the easiest-to-do keyaccomplishments down to just those that create thelargest total benefits, both for and beyond the hiddenconsensus. You don’t have to be precise in yourmeasurements. Be satisfied with finding the differencesthat can be measured reasonably accurately by ordersof magnitude. From that perspective, just a few keyaccomplishments will probably be much more valuablethan the others.

After doing that, think about how the remaining keyaccomplishments could be expanded, redefined,extended, or reduced in scope to provide still morebenefits or benefits for more stakeholders. Let me giveyou an example of what might be possible. For thepurposes of the illustration, I will assume that a high-potential key accomplishment is developing a certaintype of new product that will attract a new class ofcustomers and deliver valuable benefits to existing andnew customers. For the purposes of this paragraph, thebreakthrough servant would then reconsider the newproduct to determine what other valuable benefits couldbe delivered by redefining what type of new product isdeveloped.

Here’s a specific example of the illustration. KentuckyFried Chicken (KFC) wanted to develop a non-fried chickenproduct beginning in the 1960s to attract customers whowanted nothing to do with fried chicken but liked chicken.Having seen how popular rotisserie-cooked chickens werein KFC restaurants in Australia and in supermarketsaround the world, decades of research went intodeveloping that sort of product. The efforts didn’t lead tothe desired results.

In recent years, the company took a new direction byredefining what type of new product to develop: Theresult was Kentucky Grilled Chicken, a product thatcombines spices with a grilled flavor and appearance thatrotisserie chickens don’t have. The new recipe andcooking style quickly became popular with KFCcustomers, provided health benefits compared to friedchicken, and expanded the chain’s sales and profitability.

Had KFC defined its new product requirements morecarefully in the 1960s, this product could have beenavailable and selling well many decades earlier. Theopportunity was missed due to the definition of thedesired benefits being thought of too narrowly,seeking to help the company make more sales, ratherthan extending to providing benefits that customerswanted, which included not only healthier food but also a new and appealing flavor.

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About Me

I'm a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and attended Harvard Business School to study marketing while in law school. I'm a member of the bar in Massachusetts.
I teach graduate courses in entrepreneurship and strategic management on-line at Rushmore University (www.rushmore.edu).
I head a consulting firm (www.mitchellandco.com), that specializes in entrepreneurship, finance and strategy.
I am a co-author of The 2,000 Percent Solution (www.2000percentsolution.com), The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, The Ultimate Competitive Advantage (the most highly praised business book by customer reviewers in its first year), and The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook.
I head a pro bono site for improving world progress (www.fastforward400.com).
I have headed The Billionaire Entrepreneurs' Master Mind (see http://billiondollarbusiness.blogspot.com) since 2006.